Duke Orsino


Biography:
Duke Orsino loves the idea of being in love. [1]Duke is also in love with Olivia but she won't give him the time of day, because she is in love with someone else. Duke's servant Cesario(Viola) is secretly in love with him, but she can't confess her love for him, because she is disguised as a man. Orsino sends her to go tell Olivia that he is in love with her and he will not take no for an answer from her. Orsino is not aware that "Cesario" is secretly a woman and has feelings for him. Orsino sends Viola/Cesario to talk to Olivia and tell her that he loves her. He thinks very highly of himself and since he thought if she loved her family, then she could love him even more easily. Orsino and Antonio are enemies and don't like each other. Orsino also thinks Viola/Cesario is a gay man, like Olivia does as well. Orsino is mad at Olivia for treating him badly so he says that he will take away the one thing she loves, which is Cesario, which makes Viola very happy, because Viola loves him.

Quotations
-"If music be the food of love, play on." [2]
- "Why, so I do, the noblest that I have
- "Oh, when mine eyes did see Olivia first, Methought she purged the air of pestilence.That instant was I turned into a hart, And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E'er since pursue me." [3]
- "I Cesario, thou know’st no less but all have unclasped."
- "To thee the book even of my secret soul." [4]
-Why, so I do, the noblest that I have.

Oh, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence.
That instant was I turned into a hart,
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E'er since pursue me. [1]

"Away before me to sweet beds of flowers.
Love thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers." [2]

"Be not denied access, stand at her doors,
And tell them there thy fixed foot shall grow
Till thou have audience." [3]

"If ever thou shalt love,
In the sweet pangs of it remember me;
For such as I am, all true lovers are,
Unstaid and skittish in all motions else
Save in the constant image of the creature
That is beloved." [4]

"Then let thy love be younger than thyself,
Or thy affection cannot hold the bent." [5]

I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love
To spite a raven’s heart within a dove.[6]

"That face of his I do remember well.

Yet, when I saw it last, it was besmeared
As black as Vulcan in the smoke of war.
A baubling vessel was he captain of,
For shallow draught and bulk unprizable,
With which such scathful grapple did he make
With the most noble bottom of our fleet,
That very envy and the tongue of loss
Cried fame and honor on him.—What’s the matter?" [7]

"What, to perverseness? You, uncivil lady,

To whose ingrate and unauspicious altars
My soul the faithfull’st off'rings have breathed out
That e'er devotion tendered—what shall I do?" [8]

"O thou dissembling cub! What wilt thou be

When time hath sowed a grizzle on thy case?
Or will not else thy craft so quickly grow
That thine own trip shall be thine overthrow?
Farewell, and take her; but direct thy feet
Where thou and I henceforth may never meet." [9]

"Your master quits you, and for your service done him,

So much against the mettle of your sex,
So far beneath your soft and tender breeding,
And since you called me “master” for so long,
Here is my hand. You shall from this time be
Your master’s mistress." [10]


"Give me thy hand,
And let me see thee in thy woman’s weeds." [11]
- This was when Duke Orsino asks Viola/Cesario for her hand in marriage.

  1. ^ Act I, Scene i
  2. ^ > Act I, Scene i
  3. ^ Act I, Scene i
  4. ^ Act I Scene i
  5. Act I Scene i

  1. ^
  2. ^ Act I, Scene i
  3. ^ Act I, Scene iv
  4. ^ Act II, Scene iv
  5. ^ Act II, Scene iv
  6. ^ Act V, Scene i
  7. ^ Act IIIII, Scene i
  8. ^ Act IIIII, Scene i
  9. ^ Act IIIII, Scene i
  10. ^ Act IIIII, Scene i
  11. ^ Act V Scene I Page 12